Mob Rampage After Road Accident At Raigunj, Student Died

Raigunj:Angry residents went on rampage and clashed with police at Siliguri Mor area at Raigunj after a school student died under the wheels of damper on Friday, triggering arson and vandalism in the area.

A mob engaged cops in several rounds of pitched battle using whatever they could find — bricks, glass bottles— as Raigunj resembled a war zone.

The mayhem started around 10.00 am, soon after the accident took place. Traffic returned to normal finally around 12.30 pm after cops burst several rounds of tear-gas shells. Cops are probing whether the driver was speeding “It was an accident,” a traffic cop said.

Residents of the area reacted to the news of the deaths with rage. They descended on the accident spot in hordes and began brick batting at random.

Earlier, The city has been witnessed of the vandalism started by the road accident at Chingrighata where four buses had been torched, one of them while still on the move, before cops could arrive. Scared commuters and motorists ran helter-skelter as the mob ran riot.

Cops managed to partially douse the fire but the mob then targeted a WBSTC bus, pulling out its driver, and another New Town-bound private bus and set both alight. The private bus went up in flames, the smoke visible from as far as Maa Flyover; the burning bus continued to roll for a few metres before it hit another minibus and came to a stop. Two more buses met the same fate.

Cops first tried to beat the mob back by lobbing the same arsenal back but resorted to firing tear-gas shells and then took to chasing the mob into alleys off the main road. Local residents alleged that even the father of one of the two accident victims was not spared.